Several months ago my Cookeville friend Sean Setters asked me to go on a photo shoot with him. I think he had some new equipment he wanted to test, I don’t remember. I know the pain of wanting to take pictures and not having a subject (see: all my self-portraits ever) so I gladly went with him.

Towards the end of the shoot we were messing around discussing lighting and I brought up the two side-lights thing that’s popular when you want something to look dramatic and maybe menacing. Well, he set it up and I played along and he produced this:

which is, to me, a very amusing photograph. I mean I don’t usually hang around dark alleys trying to look menacing and failing. Usually.

Then several weeks later Sean S. surprised me by presenting me with a print of this image, I believe 11×13 or so. Big old print. Metallic paper as well, so it was shiny and wonderful. I was very glad to receive it, and got it home, and then realized … I can’t really hang this in my house. What a strange image to present to visitors, you know? “Hey welcome to my place, I’m going to beat you up.”

So I held on to it and tried to figure out what to do with it. Shortly afterwards I started dating Casey, and after we’d been going out for a while and I knew her sense of humor I gave it to her. I said, “HERE! Here is a picture of me for you to have back home in Knoxville so you never forget me!”

Don’t worry, I mean, I knew what I was doing.

The next weekend I went to visit her in Knoxville and I said, “So, did you put that picture up anywhere?” and she told me flat-out, “No. It is too creepy.” I knew she was a smart woman.

So time passes, and we move down to New Orleans together. As we’re unpacking her stuff we came across the picture, and said, “So, should we hang this up here in our new house?” and quickly agreed that no, it’s still too creepy and weird to present to visitors.

After looking at it for a month or two, always curious what purpose it could serve, I had an idea. I know it’s too strange for me to hang up in my own house, as it is a portrait of me, but it’s not too weird for someone that’s not me. That led me to hold a contest of sorts with some of my internet friends. I told them that whichever of them could come up with the strangest thing to do with my picture (not mutilating or disfiguring it, of course) would become the proud receipient.

My internet friend Sean J., whom I have never met in real life, won the contest by popular vote by stating that he would hang it on the inside of his medicine cabinet so that snoopy jerks would get an eyeful. This, I agreed, was a grand idea. I sent the print to Sean J.

Here’s where things get a bit mixed-up. There was another contest going on at this same message board where the current challenge was:

“I want to see [one of us] standing on a non-deserted street corner holding a sign with a proposition written on it. What the proposition is doesn’t matter — don’t get yourselves arrested, folks — so long as passing traffic can ostensibly read it.”

[this is the kind of contest where the only prize for meeting the challenge is the right to declare the next challenge]

Sean J. decided to kill one and a half birds with one stone, and presented the world with this:

You can click that picture for bigger, but the important part is this:

That is some street corner in central Florida. That is some woman he does not know. He said he actually got five bucks for doing that. Somehow.

Sean J. presented this image back to the judges and the crowd went wild. A discussion ensued. Someone made a joke about “the komara fund” and then next thing you know,

was registered. Anonymously. I have no idea which of my crazy stupid internet friends did this, but apparently the joke was worth the ~$8 domain registration fee to them. I know it is to me.

This, my friends, is where the story ends. For now.

I will certainly let you know if I receive any benefit from having a fund set up in my name. And Sean S., I hope you don’t mind that I sent the picture off to a man I’ve never met. I can only imagine that the ensuing weirdness makes up for it.

I actually found your blog via a two-years-old entry which had a discussion in the comments about how pear blossoms smell like ass, but this pic and the accompanying entry are awesome. I esp. like the bit about your one friend that put your portrait up inside his medicine cabinet.

But the Komara Fund? Epic.

(Also, I’m from Texas but now live in Knoxville, so it has that extra “small world” bit to it.)